Spike Lee In Talks To Direct Remake Of Oldboy?

November 10, 2009 was a fantastic day for film fans everywhere. Why, you ask? Because the planned remake of Park Chan-wook's epic Oldboy, set to be directed by Steven Spielberg and star Will Smith, was officially cancelled as DreamWorks and Mandate Films couldn't work out the rights for the original manga. While we obviously can't make generalizations about how bad the film would have been, I do think that it's safe to say that the world is a better place without a remake of that amazing film. If only Hollywood would take a lesson from Fred Gwynne in Pet Sematary: sometimes dead is better.

Twitch has learned that not only is Oldboy being given new life, but Spike Lee (of all people) is now in talks to direct it. Talks about an American remake have been circling since 2008. In the South Korean original, a man named Ho Dae-su is kidnapped and held as a prisoner in a small cell for 15 years. Never knowing why he was captured, he's then released, given new clothes, some money and a cell phone. Hunting down the man who held him captive and seeking both answers and revenge, it's revealed that there is a much larger plan in play. Mark Protosevich, whose credits include Thor, I Am Legend and The Cell, has been hired to write the script and Doug Davison and Roy Lee will be producing the film through Mandate Pictures.

I truly don't understand why this needs to happen. In the eight years since the film's initial release it has spread rapidly through word of mouth, has reached the rank of #95 on IMDb's Top 250 and is available for anyone to watch on Netflix instant. Why in hell do we need an English language version of this movie? Sure, Spike Lee is a much more interesting choice for the project than Spielberg and we can only hope that Smith has left the project to the past, but this is a complete waste of time, effort, skill and money for anyone that's involved with the production. Just let it go.